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Major update on Christa Pike’s condition as she makes huge step doctors thought she might never manage
Less than a month after Christa Pike survived two doses of the lethal injection, the convicted killer’s lawyers have provided a major update on her recovery.
Pike, 50, who was set to be the first woman killed by the state in Tennessee in over 200 years after spending 30 years on death row, arrived at the hospital with “swollen, burned, and blistered” arms after receiving two doses of a lethal injection drug, pentobarbital.
Pike is somehow walking and talking again
Despite the attempts to end her life, authorities have now been tasked with keeping her alive due to a flaw in the death penalty protocol.
However, Pike has surpassed all expectations and is miraculously walking and talking again.
One of her attorneys told TMZ that her mobility has massively improved, and she is able to walk better without help, and she is now speaking in full sentences.
However, her cognitive and psychological functioning are still under very close supervision.
Although it could take over a month until the potential long-term effects from the botched execution are known, Pike is considered somewhat of a medical marvel. Less than a week after becoming the first prisoner ever to survive a lethal injection in Tennessee, she was awake and speaking.
At first, Pike’s attorneys were told she was brain dead and that she would soon be taken off life support.
Pike woke up the day after the failed execution attempts
But her attorney Randy Spivey revealed that the next day, “to the shock of everyone, including me, including her team and including the medical team, Christa woke up and began talking.”
The lawyer also claimed that the death-row inmate’s first words after waking up while hooked up to a ventilator on October 6 were: “Where am I and who are you?” before asking about her victim Colleen Slemmer’s family.
According to reports, even after two syringes of potent poison pentobarbital were administered, she had “not lost consciousness and still had a heartbeat,” and was “audibly snoring”.
Witnesses of the failed execution attempts reported watching medical staff struggle to administer the injection and even claimed that Pike tried to help guide them towards a vein to insert the IV.
Allegedly, one needle was bent when it was pulled from her arm after the first failed attempt. The murderer, who had been imprisoned since killing fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer in 1995, was reportedly left crying and whispering throughout the process.
Pike was released from the hospital on October 10 and returned to the prison where she has resided for over three decades.
It is not yet known whether the state will push for another execution attempt or if her sentence will be commuted to life in prison following the failed lethal injection attempt.